


So, Sherlock Holmes...

by orphan_account



Series: Running and Catching [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abelism, Alternate Meeting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blind Character, Deaf Character, Fluff, M/M, Motorbikes, Sweet, Young Sherlock, abelist language, anon tumblr prompt, ooc, young john - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They don’t hire deaf detectives?”</p><p>Sherlock shrugged, knowing John’s hand would feel it.  “Not even ones like me.”</p><p>John smiled.  “Fools.  I should have known.  You have an accent.  I thought maybe you were just German.”</p><p>It was Sherlock’s turn to laugh this time, and he took John’s hand, giving it a squeeze before putting it back.  “And your mother is a fool for not trusting her son.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	So, Sherlock Holmes...

**Author's Note:**

> For tumblr anon prompt- oh please give me deaf!sherlock blind!john. maybe teen!fic or something. sweet and fluffy. OOC is okay.
> 
> Well I hope this satisfies. Also I've had tumblr issues so I've made a new one at lala-lady-elena if anyone wants to follow. The other one is set for delete because for some reason it keeps getting effing hacked.

It was the one thing he’d always been really good at. Observing. Everything had a pattern, a meaning, motivation. Every itch, every twitch, every leg tap. The way he grabbed his fork by the prongs, or the way she tapped her finger on the rim of her glass before taking a drink. His eyebrow raise, the way her tongue darted out to touch the corner of her mouth.

The way she swirled each tin of biscuits in her hands before selecting the one in the very back. The way he flicked the sealed tabs of cereal boxes before setting them in his hand basket. 

Everything had a pattern. Everything had meaning.

Everything was so boring. My god. It was so boring.

Droning voices on and on about inane, superficial things that they’d all come to forget in an hour’s time. The words falling from their lips without rhyme or reason. Chattering birds flocking here and there with their mating calls and useless little brains fixated on food and sex and sleep and that was it. 

That was it.

They never questioned why he sat there. Not often anyway. Not really. They just brought him tea after tea after tea with lemon which he always requested but never used, and when they did try and talk to him he’d rip the little device out of his ear so they’d be silenced. Whether they liked it or not.

He preferred it that way anyway. Especially when he was tired of observing and decided instead to rip through the streets with his motorbike humming between his legs. He only wore the leather jacket because he’d crashed once when a careless driver was too busy with her mobile to pay attention to his signalled turn. He didn’t mind pain. Pain was sensation, something he could focus on and move through. But he disliked the burning all up and down his arms. He disliked how it made his hand useless for six weeks which severely put a damper on how he communicated most of the time.

He spoke. Often. He’d had the implant since he was eight months old and his parents had been totally verbal. Well except his mum who, like him, found sign language to be far more expressive, far more capable of explaining oneself without fumbling over English which was hugely flawed and, to him, the language of the incompetent morons he was surrounded by.

But they were afraid for him. Wanted him to fit in. His mum grew up different, got lucky meeting a man who adored her differences so she panicked when the doctors told her her little boy couldn’t hear. Mycroft, of course, Mycroft with his smug little fat face and fat fingers poking into everything belonging to Sherlock, voted against the device. But what were his parents going to do? Listen to a ten year old about an infant?

They should have, Sherlock thought as he got older and began to hate the thing attached to his insides. He could have it removed but there was that little problem about him not doing well under the anaesthesia and perhaps it had something to do with his previous, and completely accidental addiction, but either way, it was here to stay. For now.

He’d just gotten finished with DI Lestrade, solving a case simply by looking over the photos because he couldn’t be arsed to trek all the way to Paddington Station to look at the body. Not that it mattered because it was obvious and it infuriated him beyond all reason that Lestrade didn’t see the obvious clues. It was like the killer had stuck up a giant, neon, blinking sign with an arrow pointing to, ‘YOU WILL CATCH ME HERE.’

But none of them ever got it. Not even the pinch-faced, Sour Sally. She hated Sherlock almost as much as he hated her. And he hated her because she actually could be good but she allowed herself to get all distracted and second-guess her observations by the rest of the morons on her team. Sherlock hated people who couldn’t trust themselves. Which was almost all people.

So more often than not he found himself at this table, drinking his tea, and feeling so hateful.

That was, until the boy walked in. Though, he was hardly a boy, was he. Older than Sherlock's 19 years by at least two years, which was obvious by the tilt of his head when he listened to things. And he listened to things because he was blind. He carried no white cane, at least out in the open. He walked on his mum’s arm whilst she scouted out a table and brought him to it.

And he was different. Because although she guided him and he let her, he hated her for it. Sherlock watched, he observed as she got him a sandwich and began to cut it into pieces. And he observed as the boy’s jaw went hard and frustrated and he reached out for the plate saying, “Mum for Christ’s sake I can manage a sandwich,” but he put his hand right there under the knife and got cut.

The mum’s face went pale, then red and she admonished, “John! I told you to just let me do it. Why don’t you listen to me. Now now, hold it still, let me fetch something to put on it.”

“Bloody hell it’s just a nick,” he hissed although it was a little bit more than that. Drops of red stained the white plate providing a stark contrast.

The mum was up and back again in a flash with a plaster borrowed from the man behind the counter. She dressed his wound and he said nothing as she continued to cut the sandwich into patronizing, infuriating small pieces.

She watched him like a hawk when he ate.

It was clear this John had always been blind, and it was clear his mum had always been a twat. Sherlock knew she’d get up again. The way she pulled money out of her bag and a list of things to order from the counter, Sherlock would have a few minutes to sit because the queue was at least seven people long now but whatever she had was important.

He observed her telling John to sit and finish up his tea and she’d be back in a moment. So she vacated her seat and Sherlock took it. John startled a little. Sherlock wore no scent but people seemed to notice something about the way he smelled anyway, but he didn’t care. 

“D’you like motorbikes?” Sherlock asked.

John’s eyebrows rose. “Never been on one.”

“Would you like to?”

That was all it really took. There was a muttered, “Oh god yes,” and then his hand darted out and found Sherlock’s with interesting accuracy, impressive had Sherlock not been certain he could do it better without his sight. But that was something to contemplate and perhaps experiment much later. Because right now he had John’s hand on his leather coat and they were rushing through the crowd.

It wasn’t until John slipped on behind him that they heard his mother shriek and Sherlock couldn’t help his grin as he revved the bike, set the gear, and sped off into the street. John clung on hard, but Sherlock could feel his smiling as he pressed his face into the back of Sherlock’s neck. He was sitting up a little, probably uncomfortable but he’d get used to it.

Sherlock drove reckless and too fast, but John wasn’t afraid. He was elated and begged Sherlock to go faster, take him further, make the next turn a little sharper.

“Where are we?”

“My flat.” Sherlock parked the bike in his usual spot and didn’t help John off. He watched him stumble a little, but didn’t move to help him as the boy oriented himself, brushed back a lock of dirty blonde hair, and sighed. He also didn’t tell John they were only a block away from the café, but they’d gone the long way round the city and back again.

John stayed on Sherlock’s heel, his hand barely touching his elbow as they made for the door. “Steps. Twelve of them. Mind the low beam.” Sherlock’s voice punctuated the silence as they made the climb up and he hoped Mrs. Hudson wasn’t home just yet because he wanted a moment to observe this boy in earnest.

John, for his part, nodded and Sherlock could see his lips moving as he counted under his breath, one hand going up to see just how low the low beam was, and then trailed his hand along the wall til they reached the flat’s door.

“It’s messy. Mind your step. You have a cane?”

John pulled it from the pocket of his jacket and flicked it out. “Mum doesn’t let me use it often. Doesn't trust it.”

“She doesn’t let you use much of your own brain, does she?” Sherlock let John’s arm go. “Look around if you will. I’ll put tea on.” It was one of three things he wasn’t rubbish at in the kitchen. Tea, coffee, and toast. The rest was either take-away or charity from Mrs. Hudson who hated cooking but did so because she liked Sherlock.

John gave a non-committal noise, or at least that’s what Sherlock assumed because he heard a low tone but no distinct consonants or vowels. He busied himself with the kettle. It was already full, electric contraption his mum had given him two Christmases ago since he had complained his burners were always occupied with experiments every time he wanted tea. It made the water taste different, he was convinced of it, even if Mycroft called him an idiot because there was no real explanation for why water would taste different boiled in an electric kettle.

There was, but Mycroft was stupid. Or at least, as stupid of a child as the Holmes’ parents could ever create with their combined genetics.

John observed in his way. His hands finding books and papers and Sherlock’s skull which he lingered on longer than anything else in the room. Sherlock watched from the doorway as he found the window, and Sherlock’s violin which he plucked a string or two. The desk and laptop which was currently being used as a tea cosy with no less than nine mugs scattered, all in various states of not-quite-empty. He made his way round, tripping only a few times but catching himself before he fell.

He found the kitchen last, and his hands found Sherlock’s chest before anything else. He stepped back, blushing. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Sherlock took a step back, but stopped John with a touch to the shoulder just before his hand went down on the table which was covered in a very vicious phial of acidic compounds. “Don’t touch there. You’ll get burnt.”

John dropped his hand, not asking for further explanation and Sherlock wasn’t sure if he liked that or hated it. Instead he fetched the tea and a tin of stale biscuits which Mrs. Hudson had given him god knows when, and they went back to the lounge. John took the chair Sherlock never ever sat in, and accepted the tea black, no sugar or lemon.

“This is mad, you realize. I mean completely insane.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow went up. “How so?”

“I just took off with you.” He let out a high-pitched, nervous laugh and stood up, moving round the low table with acute accuracy and then dropped onto the sofa next to Sherlock. Their knees barely touched. “I just left my mum at the café, hopped on a motor bike, and now I’m in your flat.”

“How’s that mad?”

John shook his head, reached out with one hand to find the table, then placed his cup down. “Because I don’t even know your name. I don’t know where we are. You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know you were born blind. Probably a condition due to a premature birth. It’s likely your parents were given the option of too much oxygen which would make you blind or too little which would make you retarded and your mum chose too much thinking she could handle one disability better than the other. She can’t, in case you were wondering. She’d be just as lost either way. I know you’re well educated, never moved away from home. I know you crave contact and conflict. You’ve got an older sibling who probably has severe issues, drinking I’d assume. Absentee father, probably a doctor, and this is the first time you’ve ever done something like this.”

There was a pregnant pause before John let out a puff of air Sherlock could feel, but couldn’t hear. It was too soft a sound. “That was… amazing. That was truly spectacular.”

Sherlock smiled, startled by the admission. “That’s not what people usually say.”

“What do they usually say?”

Sherlock’s mouth quirked up at the side. “Fuck off.”

John laughed. A full belly laugh, his head shaking, and his hand found Sherlock’s knee. “Do you work for the police? I mean, are you a detective? Because you should be.”

“Consulting Detective. Position created for me alone.”

“Why consult?”

Sherlock frowned, then brought John’s hand up to the device on his head. He sat still as the nimble fingers explored the piece buried in his soft curls, down to the piece in his ear.

“They don’t hire deaf detectives?”

Sherlock shrugged, knowing John’s hand would feel it. “Not even ones like me.”

John smiled. “Fools. I should have known, though. You have an accent. I thought maybe you were just German.”

It was Sherlock’s turn to laugh this time, and he took John’s hand, giving it a squeeze before putting it back. “And your mother is a fool for not trusting her son.”

John flinched. Then, as if on cue, his mobile buzzed in his pocket and a tiny, robotic voice chimed out, “Mother calling.”

Sherlock reached into John’s pocket and pulled out the mobile. Raising John up, he drew him to the window and opened it. A stiff breeze hit them both full on the face. He pressed the device into John’s palm. “The address is 221 B Baker Street and the name’s Sherlock Holmes.”

John nodded, his face down toward the mobile he was holding. He lifted it, his thumb poised to answer. A tiny piece of Sherlock was surprised when the mobile went flying. He pretended to himself that he could hear the crack it made on the pavement below, which gave him a satisfaction he could feel deep in his bones.

John’s hand rose to Sherlock’s face, the tips of his fingers touching the upturn of Sherlock’s mouth, then cupped his cheek. “So, Sherlock Holmes... here we are.”

Sherlock nodded and leant into the warm fingers. “So. Here we are.”


End file.
